Summer 2001 |
Notes on Midnight's Children |
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[additional commentaries on Midnight's Children --updated 14 June 2001] Mike Rios Eng 7757 Dr. R. Nordquist Notes on Midnight’s Children "Reading Joan Didion’s fiction," says Sarah Vowell, "is a little like looking at Le Corbusier furniture: It’s pristine, beautiful, downright perfect, and yet not particularly inviting to live with—a little cold, a little cruel, a little too angular to accommodate human curves. Phrase by phrase Didion’s prose style is impeccable." The same can be said of Salman Rushdie’s prose in Midnight’s Children. Of course, the "can" should be set off, italicized, stressed. Because Rushdie’s prose does offer some warmth, some moments of humor. And yet the moments come few and far between. So that when Aadam Aziz swears that he sees the sheet-covered Naseem’s exposed "bottom reddening in a shy, but compliant blush" or when William Methwold stands "in the afterglow of his Estate with his hairpiece in his hand" or when Saleem asks—quite rhetorically—if anyone understood that Mrs. Dubash had used the Superman comic-book to invent a money-earning persona for her son, I am comically relieved for too short a period of time (23, 127, 309). Always, always I am aware of the genius wit at work in the narrative. Always, always I am aware of the form and function lying on the pages in front of me. And always I am aware that Rushdie has written these words, not Saleem, not the narrator any professor would tell me is telling the story. Even when I read the most hilarious moments, those in which Saleem converses with Padma—calming her, preparing her, guiding her—my hmmffs (sorry, no hahaha’s here) are quickly silenced by the awareness of Padma’s true identity. For Padma, that loyal critical listener, is really me and us, the reader. Don’t I/we listen to Saleem’s story as his intended does? With interest? With the expectation of meaning? With tinges of impatience at the sometimes seemingly snaillike pace of his enormous narrative? With hot flashes of short-lived insight? With unmasked incredulity at errors or fantastic events? With the belief that if I/we continue to listen and read I/we will be rewarded with a tale worth telling? In Padma, Saleem/Rushdie has his cake and eats it too. His faithful listener is indeed a round character (her personality is as mammoth as her leg muscles), despite her minuscule screen time. (Which leads me to digress a moment: the film references and metaphors Saleem uses allow him not only to comment on the influence of popular Western ideology on India and other nations, but they allow him to balance and enhance the lush variety of smells throughout the novel with an extensive mixture of visual imagery as well. For Saleem seems to believe that it is more important to place his listener/reader within his story by means of sense—namely smell and sight—rather than emotion and sentiment, which goes along with his plan for pickling memories. A smell does have a powerful affect on memory. But getting back to Padma…) She also appears or is evoked only when it is necessary for Saleem/Rushdie to speak directly to the reader. He reassures her in order to reassure the reader. Consider the following passage: …While I, at my desk, feel the sting of Padma’s impatience … I wish, at times, for a more discerning audience, someone who would understand the need for rhythm, pacing, the subtle introduction of minor chords which will rise, swell, seize the melody. (113) His authorial plea—and what a plea it is—is to the reader, and the reader accepts. I/we read on. Yet when Padma later says to Saleem, "At last … you’ve learned how to tell things really fast," she is speaking the reader’s thoughts. Thank God, I think as I read this statement. Yes, Padma, tell him! But in my twists and turns through denial and impatience and acceptance I feel, in a very real sense, linked with Saleem and Rushdie. I kick and scream. I sit and listen. Most importantly, I react. So perhaps it is not so bad that the author has done a poor job of disguising himself, because it was never his intention. Garret Wilson writes, in his wonderfully parodical 1999 review of Midnight’s Children, that it is the novel’s very "excellency" that "keeps it from perfection". (The same can and probably has been said of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!) Wilson sees a problem with how every aspect of the novel comes together, from its complex plotlines through its cultural commentaries to its varied symbols. I agree, to a point. It does bug me when Rushdie, yes it’s now Rushdie not Saleem (I find it difficult to defend Saleem the narrator’s case as an independent individual, free from severe links with his creator author, much the same way I find it difficult to emancipate Ishmael from Melville. Both narrators are forever linked with their creators, forever influenced and informed by the deity’s pen unlike a character such as Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway who has been created but given free will.), when Rushdie explains his symbols time after time after time. A short short list of instances where he does so: 1. Names, particularly Saleem’s on page 348-349 2. His relation to the Kolynos Kid on page 275 3. Saleem’s link to history on pages 272-273 4. Numbers on page 248 5. Beginnings and endings and blood in the "Alpha and Omega" chapter 6. The foretelling of his severed finger on page 270 A part of me says hey, I know you’re a smart guy. Another part says I’m not stupid; I get it. And still another part says hey, I probably would’ve got it later, maybe after reading it again. Perhaps it is this last part, this whisper from the reader, that Rushdie is replying to by analyzing his work before anyone else does. Wilson says that Rushdie knows "his story is too clever to be tied down to only his meanings," that Rushdie knows "that his clever story has a thousand and one interpretations." If this is true then perhaps Rushdie is trying to get his meanings out of the way so that the reader can find more. Or challenging the reader to discover them. But this would mean that Rushdie tries to conceal them. Does he? After all, "concealment has always been a crucial architectural consideration in India" (55). Or are they lying like purloined letters in front of the reader’s eyes? Or is he merely showing off? I am reminded of Naseem waking up in Delhi and coming to the realization that "the sun was in the right place, and it was her position which had changed" (71). Perhaps Rushdie’s novel is the sun. It certainly, like all works, is approached from many positions, many points of view. Perhaps Rushdie is only adding some light through his analyses and explanations with which to keep his novel burning brightly. Perhaps Rushdie feels a sense of urgency (now there’s a paradox) in getting his point(s) across. Perhaps his message(s) from the past must be comprehended now, not later. At one point in the novel, Saleem ponders his inheritance and recalls his grandparents’ perforated sheet, how "it condemned [him] to see [his] own life—its meanings, its structures—in fragments also; so that by the time [he] understood it, it was far too late" (119). Does Rushdie not have faith in his reader? In his "nation of forgetters" (36)? In the critics? Does he not want his novel, his homeland, understood too late? Is he fighting the "unreliable years" (87)? Ironically, Saleem is Rushdie’s perforated sheet. We see the author and his genius in glimpses, in parts. (Can we say that the cracks in Saleem are the cracks of a delicately manufactured character who is meant to last only long enough to get to the last page and allow his author to say what must be said?) We also see India in bits and pieces (a place that has seen its own share of fractures and fissures), so that the novel, in turn, becomes India’s perforated sheet, complete with thousands of bloodstains. And as I reach the end of the novel I cannot help but feel linked with Saleem and Rushdie and India. Magic realism seems to be an integral part of this novel. From Saleems’ telepathy (and all of the midnight’s children’s powers) through Narlikar’s luminescent ashes to Ahmed’s fading skin the fantastic is interwoven with the real. Why? Is the novel an allegory as has been suggested by a number of critics? Is the fantastic present to allow for the plausibility that Saleem and other characters play such monumental roles in history? Is the fantastic a part of the novel as a metaphor for the significant role of religious beliefs in every day Indian society (e.g.: caste system)? Is the fantastic a part of the novel because the events that occurred in India’s history were themselves fantastic? Can we say that what happened to India would never be believed—to use Saleem’s words—had it not been for the fact that it did happen? Is the fantastic simply a device with which to relate and therefore comment on historical events, political figures, cultural influences? Or is the fantastic an element of the novel because the fantastic is an element of India? Does the linking of magic to India somehow hinder the novel? Does magic realism somehow do to Indians what the Noble Savage ideal does to Native Americans, impose a false identity to a whole people? Does it push the reader to seriously contemplate the absurd or does it absurdly treat the serious? Because history plays such an important role in the novel (perhaps the most important), the reader should have some knowledge of certain events, beliefs, and figures prior to undertaking the journey Saleem intends for him or her. It can be read without this prior knowledge (due to the many levels the narrative operates on), but at least some familiarity with India and its history is advised. The following are just a few (by no means all) of the events, beliefs, figures the reader should familiarize him or herself with:
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